For this review, Progeny Press gave us a downloadable digital study guide for the book, Stone Fox. Progeny Press Study Guides are a fantastic way for children to ‘dig deeper’ and enjoy learning by reading literature, all from a Christian perspective. Progeny Press has Study Guides for many well known literature, all available as a physical book, a cd with a PDF ebook, or a downloadable PDF file with many of the PDF files being interactive. They are also available for many grade levels: lower and upper elementary, middle and high school. The novel doesn’t come with the study guide, though you can purchase them through Progeny Press if you don’t have them or can’t borrow them from the library.
This Stone Fox study guide is intended for use for children in Upper Elementary (Grades 3-6). This is an interactive guide, allowing your child to enter their answers directly on the computer and saving their progress. You can also print off the 65 pages, including the answer key, if you so wish.
Included in this study guide is a synopsis, author information, a note on how to use the guide, pre-reading activities, chapter studies, overview, review puzzle race, essays and projects as well as ideas for post-reading activities.
How did we go?
First, both our boys read the book completely from start to finish. I chose to print off the study guide, as we are travelling and don’t always have a stable internet connection.
Then we started with the study guide, reading the author and background information before completing the pre-reading activities together. Included is also a note for the parent on how to best use the study guide to help your child to clearly understand the literature they are reading.
Our boys then completed the study guide together, first reading the chapters again before taking turns to answer the questions. There are 10 chapters in this book and with the study guide going through 2 chapters at a time, they completed two chapters a day.
For the vocabulary exercises, they looked up each word in the dictionary to find the meaning, to help them complete the activities which included: matching the word to the meaning and using the word in a sentence. The activities for chapters 3 and 4 included synonyms and antonyms. Our youngest boy hasn’t had much experience with these yet, so we took some time out to explain these to him to make sure he completely understood.
After completing all the chapter activities, they went on to complete the overview in which they learnt about creating and understanding characters and the structure of a good written story. This really helped them with understanding what a story needs to make it interesting and exciting to read.
Our boys found the Review Puzzle Race at the end of the book super fun. Completing the Essays and Projects took them quite a bit of time, but they really enjoyed researching different topics and learning about them. There are also ideas for Post-Reading Activities which our boys have only completed a few of, so far.
Overall, we love these study guides. We have not heard of Stone Fox before but since our boys love reading, they were keen to find a new book. I love how the Bible is incorporated into the studies and how the children are encouraged to research so they have a better understanding of what they are reading. It was so easy to prepare and caters to many learning styles.
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